North Dakota: Oil fields vs. Reservations
North Dakota: Oil fields vs. Reservations
Republicans benefited from the oil boom, will they bust along with it?
Happy Thursday Everyone. I’m continuing my focus on states with large Native American populations by honing in on a state where the voices of Indigenous peoples have been ignored for the sake of economic production: North Dakota
Topline Takeaways
Donald Trump replicated his 2016 performance and lost no counties to Democrats by staying steadfast with his commitment to fracking.
The two counties won by Joe Biden have lower than average White populations as they hold some of the state’s Native American reservations.
While the state’s recent oil boom has brought political fortunes to the Republican party, that boom has begun to bust, threatening the economic prospects of North Dakota voters.
Joe Biden won the same two counties as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, further cementing that Democratic strength in North Dakota is confined to counties holding the state’s Native American reservations. Biden also gained ground in the state’s most populous county, home to Fargo, which holds nearly a quarter of North Dakota’s voters. This coalition is hampered by the historical disenfranchisement of Native Americans and is best illustrated by a law passed in advance of the recent 2018 Senate election that ultimately led to a Republican gain.
H.B. 1369, originally signed by Republican governor Doug Burgum in April 2017, is a voter ID law that requires all valid forms of voter identification to include a current residential street address. While this seems like an incredibly basic requirement on its face, many Native Americans living on reservations do not have a street address and have to travel to a post office to pick up their mail. As a result, tribal IDs that are often used as valid federal identification do not comply with the new law as they typically do not list street addresses. While Republicans claim the law was necessary to prevent (unsubstantiated) voter fraud, many see it as a way to reduce the electoral prospects of Democrats as Native Americans favor the party and are disproportionately likely to be affected by the new law. After legal challenges brought the law to the Supreme Court, the court upheld the law less than a month before the 2018 election, making it difficult for affected voters to take the necessary steps to ensure they could still participate. The 2020 results prove that this pattern of disenfranchisement has been successful for Republicans counties that are majority Native American have turnout rates as much as 20-points lower than neighboring, majority White counties.
Donald Trump’s success in North Dakota is largely due to his support for hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. The controversial drilling technique is responsible for the state’s recent oil boom after the discovery of the Parshall Oil Field in 2006. Tapping this oil field led North Dakota to skyrocket in its oil production, peaking as the second largest oil producer in the United States in the mid 2010s. Since the state is far from the country’s oil refinery hub in the Gulf of Mexico, pipelines are necessary to transport the valuable resource. While environmentalists engaged in a years-long uproar surrounding the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, many North Dakota voters saw themselves as the beneficiaries of these major infrastructure projects, leading to more fervent support of oil-minded Republicans.
The oil industry accounts for roughly half of the state’s total tax collections. In the peak years of the oil boom, the state budget ballooned to a billion-dollar budget surplus. State voters approved a “Legacy Fund” which takes 30% of oil revenues for a fund to be used to diversify the state’s economy. One problem: the boom didn’t last for the decades that economists and politicians initially predicted and the Legacy Fund is not yet large enough to meaningfully pivot the state’s economy as oil production decreases.
Forecasting the Future: While the oil boom has lifted the fortunes of Republicans, a bust has replaced the boom. At the peak of the boom around 2013, over 200 oil rigs were operating within the state; less than 30 are currently in operation today. As oil production dries up, will support for Republicans go with it? History suggests that North Dakota voters will stick with the party. Despite encountering similar boom and bust patterns in the late 20th century, the state stayed in lock step with Republicans, with the last time the state supported a Democratic presidential candidate being Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. While Democrats saw some success in state-level races in the 1980s, North Dakota’s electorate continues to skew conservative, and thusly Republican.